All this outside space – an unusual feature in London – was one of the main reasons we fell for this place.”Nicholas’s work is on show in Making Waves, at Flow Gallery, 1-5 Needham Road, London W11 (020-7243 0782) until 1 March. We’d like to take those out, and make two large panes that can be opened as sliding doors We’ve also got a terrace outside the bedroom and guest room. At the moment, the windows between the dining room and terrace are separated into panes of glass in a fixed timber frame. There’s a large terrace outside our bedroom and a larger one outside our dining room. Last summer, we planted lavender and grasses in troughs around its edge, which looked spectacular. We have barbecues and sunbathe in the larger terrace in summer.

We’ve also got older examples – an art deco, orb-shaped light and a Sixties lamp that looks like an abstract sculpture, which suits the modernist style of the flat. He works in the lighting industry and knows lots of interesting designers who do lighting for West End shows or work with architects. The same goes for a lot of our furniture in a similarly modernist vein – there’s a screen made of Columbian pine that looks like it was designed by 20th-century Finnish architect and furniture designer Alvar Aalto, and chairs in the style of Arne Jacobsen.”Although the living room is painted a dark, moody colour, there’s plenty of natural daylight elsewhere. On another wall are two drawings of set designs for early Bond films – one is for Goldfinger – given to us by friends. We’ve also got ceramics by Lucie Rie, Walter Keeler and Takashi Yasuda.”Michael has a very good eye for lighting. Michael’s mother used to work for him, and once a year he’d give her one of his pieces.

They’re pieces I swapped for some of mine.”The living room looks really dramatic when you turn the lights down, so they only illuminate our paintings. He was a royal portraitist – he often painted the Queen Mother – and his style was normally tight, but these pictures were done quickly when he was travelling, and are very free.”We’ve also got a Terry Frost print in the hall, in characteristically ebullient colours. These are mainly by Sir Gerald Kelly, a former president of the Royal Academy, who was friends of Rodin and Degas. There’s a lot of light throughout the flat, thanks to its big windows, so we thought the living room could take a dark colour.

I also chose the terracotta because it marries well with my ceramics, which are predominantly an earthenware brown. I spray them from below in blue to create a two-tone effect.”My ceramics are inspired by the distortions and refractions of light caused by water, and by the markings on silk moir?Some of the artworks in the flat – like a wacky wall-hung ceramic piece enclosing an egg in our bedroom and a fish made out of wire in the dining room – were made by friends. We ripped both things out.”It’s a fantastically practical flat. Although it’s not very big, it feels like it is; our bedroom has an en-suite bathroom, and, as well as a second bedroom, there’s a second bathroom.